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Tuesday, January 13, 2015

'Abuela and Her Gurus' by Margarita Barresi

In
the late 1960s my Puerto Rican grandmother, my abuela, found herself a guru.
Not, as one would expect, Walter Mercado, the famed and flamboyant Puerto Rican
astrologer often mistaken for Liberace. She was not in league with the other
abuelas who stopped everything when his TV show aired in living rooms around
San Juan. Instead, way before self-help sections existed in bookstores, when
you could count the available titles on the fingers of one hand, Abuela found
herself an American guru.

He
was Thomas A. Harris, MD, author of I’m OK, You’re OK, a book still in print
today. Abuela would hold her blue and yellow, dogeared, and highly underlined
paperback firmly with both hands as she responded to anything that annoyed,
inconvenienced, or angered her.

“I’m
okay, you’re okay,” she’d announce loudly in her husky smoker’s voice, which
had strangers on the phone often mistaking her for a man. She’d say it twenty
or more times a day in her Spanish accent, while her index finger pointed at
herself and then at you.

That
is, unless she wanted to convert you. Then, her mantra became, “I’m okay, you
better stay.” When she got her weekly
wash and set at “el beauty,” waiting in line at the Pueblo supermarket
checkout, during society lunches with friends, and most especially when any
family member was within hearing distance, Abuela preached.

"This
book will change your life. You must read it,” she would urge, gently placing
her hand on her victim’s forearm. Then she’d lift her eyebrows, tilt her head
to one side and give the ultimate seal of approval, “A doctor wrote it, you
know.”

As
an adult, I’ve learned Dr. Harris believed most of us become damaged in some
way as children, simply by being defenseless and dependent on others. We go
through life in an unhealthy state, thinking “I’m NOT okay, you’re okay.” The goal is to get to “I’m okay, you’re okay”
by recognizing and coming to terms with the demons of your childhood. Perhaps this is why I alone escaped Abuela’s
preaching. At eight years old, I still had some demons to collect.

Abuela,
however, was apparently repairing quite a bit of damage. She was a bastard
child, never allowed to know her mother, raised by her own abuela, and
eventually half-sister to three other girls. Yet she was surrounded with love,
comfort, wealth and convenience, and her father adored her. What cocktail of
“not okay” this mix created is a mystery, but I know years later she found a
book that helped her, and for at least six months in 1969 she was okay.

* * *

When
Abuela’s efforts to help us find peace of mind failed, she found a new focus:
the body. If we weren’t going to be healthy of mind, then we were going to be
healthy of body if it killed her. Her inspiration was guru number two, Edgar
Cayce, a psychic whose “readings” focused on people’s health. From these he
developed enough advice on treating and preventing illness to author several
books. Abuela latched onto his holistic approach to health, and particularly
liked his dietary recommendations. Liked, however, did not mean adhered to.

Cayce
recommended avoiding red meat, especially pork. But no self-respecting Puerto
Rican is going to eliminate pork from her diet, especially my Abuela who loved
her chicharrones (fried pork rinds) and made special trips for them to a
specific friquitin 45 minutes away in Caguas. Friquitins sell street food, but
are a step above a cart. They range anywhere from wood shacks with palm frond
roofs to concrete block establishments with Formica counters and cushioned spin
stools. Fritters made in advance – chicharrones, alcapurrias, surrullitos, and
bacalaitos -- stay under heat lamps. Most friquitines are 24-hour
establishments, or close to it. Pork any
time, many places.

The
pork was non-negotiable, so Abuela opted for another of Cayce’s
recommendations: Eat one meal a day
comprised entirely of raw vegetables. Armed with a state-of-the-art juicer, she
concocted a liquid version of Cayce’s prescription. Into the gleaming stainless
steel centrifuge would go cabbage, carrots, celery, lettuce, apples, bananas, mangoes,
and any other type of produce, in any combination. She’d down the resulting
frothy greenish brown liquid as if it was the most delicious treat in the
world. She’d then smoke a Salem, which was fine, because Cayce didn’t believe
cigarettes were harmful to people’s health.

Then
Abuela read about the nuts. “Edgar Cayce says that if you eat three almonds a
day, three peeled white almonds, you won’t get cancer,” Abuela announced one
day.

These
were special almonds and Abuela would drag me to the health food store at the
top of our street to buy them by the bagful. It was the same store where she
purchased her juicer. I was fascinated by the fruit leather and carob candy
bars sold there. Fruit leather was good, carob not so much. The powdery smell
of the healthy food always made me sneeze, or perhaps it was the freezing
temperature. The owners kept the air conditioning so cold that condensation
formed on the glass plate windows, trickling down in thin rivulets. I always
wondered who peeled those almonds. I also wondered who, besides Abuela, shopped
at this health food store in friqutin land.

Every
school day I would fish out a small foil packet containing three almonds from
my “Sock it to Me” orange and pink psychedelic lunchbox. It was the vertical,
oval kind of plastic lunchbox, so sometimes I had to dig deep to make sure I
found the packet. I would grab it, get up, walk to the classroom garbage bin,
and unceremoniously throw the packet away. I never, ever opened the almonds at
school. Being deprived of Hostess Cakes was bad enough. I wasn’t going to
advertise Abuela’s eccentricity. In any case, those three almonds didn’t stand
a chance fighting the preservatives in my daily thermos dose of Chef
Boy-ar-Dee.

* * *

Soon
Abuela tired of cleaning out the juicer, which would often get clogged with
fibers, causing the motor to run in place until you could smell it smoking. She
forgot all about improving our minds and bodies and moved right on to saving
our souls. Officially Catholic, I was the first generation in my family to
receive very little religious guidance or instruction. My grandfather had been
an altar boy, his sister an almost-nun, and both my mother and aunt attended
Catholic schools from kindergarten through twelfth grade. By the time I came
along, Catholic fatigue had set in and my grandparents had begun to search for
spiritual fulfillment elsewhere. For a while they practiced yoga and dabbled in

Buddhism,
but nothing had really connected with them until they found the Church of
Unity: Guru number three.

Abuela
discovered religion at the same time God activated my hormones. No way was I joining a “Jesus Loves Me” cult
at age 13. To this day I really have no idea what the Church of Unity stands
for. It could have been the most fulfilling spiritual experience of my life,
but because Abuela was pushing it, there was no way I was buying.

I
loathed the square, pocket-sized Daily Word magazines she carried around with
her. There was a new one each month with a reading for every day, and a muted
watercolor of Jesus on the cover. These would be falling apart by the end of
the month, just like all her other gurus’ publications. We’d all get Daily Word
booklets for our birthdays. I would run around the house hiding them whenever
my friends came over.

“All
I want for (insert holiday or special occasion here) is that you go with me to
Unity,” Abuela would plead in a woebegone tone. “Ay, is that too much to ask?”

Abuela rationed her guilt-inducing comments
carefully, for maximum impact. One of her favorite sayings when a family member
disappointed her was “Cria cuervos, y que te sacaran los ojos.” Translation: Breed crows and they will peck
your eyes out. I still don’t get
it. But it wasn’t the words, it was the
tone. And the tone emerged whenever she mentioned Unity.

I
finally gave in and told her I would attend a service. When the following
Sunday arrived, and she knocked on my locked door repeatedly to wake me up, I
pretended to be in a comatose sleep. She didn’t speak to me for a week.

As
expected, Abuela’s Unity phase eventually passed and she went back to
Catholicism when she began to truly face her mortality. I don’t believe she was
ever healthy of mind, body, and spirit, at least not simultaneously. But it was
not for lack of obsessing. She certainly tried to leave a legacy behind as she
tenaciously shared the “gifts” she discovered.

Nowadays,
I’m basically “okay,” I abhor vegetable juice, and regularly attend Catholic
mass. I’m in awe of eastern medicine, believe I’ve experienced several past
lives, and adhere to strict Feng Shui practices. My husband is tolerant,
perhaps intrigued, and my children amused. Do I regale my family and friends
with the wonders of my findings? Of course. After all, I learned from the
master.

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